A Verbose, Hands-On Nexus 7 Review

Some of you may have noticed that I am not a concise author. Perhaps that has something to do with the fact that I am not a concise reader. I like facts, details, and lots of them. So as a recent Nexus 7 purchaser, here you go.

Genesis

I’ve long used Android devices, and last year had a company-issued Motorola Xoom, which was the first Google Experience tablet with Honeycomb. That tablet has specs roughly similar to iPads; its 10.1″ screen was the same, the 1280×800 screen was better than the iPad available at the time, and its 730g weight identical to the early iPads (though 10% higher than the current iPad). I lost access to it when I changed jobs, and had been without a tablet until recently.

Other devices I own are the Galaxy Nexus, sporting a 4.65″ screen; and what’s now called the Kindle Keyboard, with an eInk screen.

I had been somewhat interested in the Kindle Fire, but the closed nature and limited capability of the system kept me away.

The Nexus 7 reviews, however, were stunning, as was the price. $200 for a great tablet. I wound up buying the $250 16GB model. But not until after I spent a great deal of time thinking about size.

Physical Size

My main concern was that the Nexus 7 would be too small to be useful. I had never been particularly pleased with my input speed on the Xoom. I tried to touch type on it, but was just never fast enough to surpass “frustratingly slow.” I have long been a fast and accurate typist on keyboard; well over 100 words per minute, and it is frustrating when my fingers can’t maintain that speed.

I figured the situation would be even worse on the Nexus 7, given its smaller size.

I also found the Xoom to sometimes feel a little small with the 10″ screen, and was concerned about that as well.

And finally, 7″ doesn’t sound all that much larger than 4.65″.

However, having actually had the Nexus 7 for a little while now, I’m very pleased with the size, and may even prefer it. The 10″ tablets are just too big and heavy to comfortably hold in one hand, and I’ve realized that part of my Xoom frustration was the fact that I had to set it down and prop it up for anything beyond very brief use. At 340g, the Nexus 7 is less than half the weight of the Xoom or iPad, and it makes a huge difference. While still nowhere near where I’d be with a keyboard, two-thumb typing in portrait mode, or even something approaching touch typing in landscape mode, is possible on the Nexus 7.

The screen size hasn’t been a bother, at all. This may be due to the fact that it’s higher resolution (it’s 1280×800 like the Xoom, but those pixels are crammed into only 7″). I think it’s also partly due to the fact that the browser in Jelly Bean is significantly better than the one in Honeycomb, and perhaps that websites are better at tablet-friendliness, too.

Overall, the Nexus 7 feels a lot farther from the size of a laptop than did the Xoom, and as such is more prone to come with me in lots of situations, I think.

It works reasonably well with foldable Bluetooth keyboards, so when thinking about a laptop replacement or alternative, that might be the way I go. A Bluetooth mouse also works with it, though I found it didn’t provide near the utility that a BT keyboard does.

Display

The display is both amazing and disappointing. Browse some photos and some of them will show up in eye-popping clarity. Websites display fine. But the screen can also take on a washed-out appearance at times. I am notoriously picky in my displays, and this bothered me enough that I researched it. Analysis has shown that poor firmware calibration has lead to the compression of highlights, which mirrors what I was seeing. I am mostly used to it by now, but it’s a disappointment.

Most of the time, though, the screen is excellent. In comparison to my eInk Kindle, however, I don’t think any tablet will ever be as good for book reading. The eInk screen truly is easier on the eyes, and the reflection of overhead lights on the Nexus 7 display can be distracting at first.

I have had occasional issues with it not registering touches properly. This is always cleared up by touching the power button to put the unit to sleep, then waking it back up.

Other Hardware

There are three hardware buttons: power and volume up/down. Physically, the device fits my hand well, though I might wish it was a little lighter like my Kindle. Charging is accomplished via high-power 2A micro-USB, and there is, of course, a headphone port. There is no alert LED like my Galaxy Nexus has, and no vibration feature. The speaker is on the back, and the microphones along the left side – a position which, it appears, many Nexus 7 cases are blocking.

Battery Life

I am astonished at how good this device is battery-wise, especially compared to the battery disaster that is the Galaxy Nexus. Google claims the Nexus 7 can survive 8 hours of solid screen-on use, and I don’t doubt it. Mine’s never gotten low enough to get a solid measurement.

Wifi

The wifi works well, as far as it goes. The wifi doesn’t support 802.11n in 5GHz, which although somewhat common for devices like this, is a bit of a disappointment.

Software

The big story about the Nexus 7 is Jelly Bean. I had used Honeycomb on the Xoom, and Ice Cream Sandwich on my Galaxy Nexus, so I’m familiar with its predecessors. Let’s take a look.

Project Butter

Much has been made of Project Butter, Google’s attempt to optimize Android to improve its responsiveness and the smoothness of things like scrolling. I can say they have done quite well. This device is so smooth you don’t notice how smooth it is. It wasn’t until I had been using it for a bit that I really noticed. That’s a job well-done.

Chrome

The browser in Jelly Bean is now called Chrome. I am not sure if this is just marketing or not. It doesn’t really feel all that different from previous versions of the Android browser, and the changes have been along the lines of incremental changes Google has introduced before.

One of the very best new features happens when you touch a link that is close to other links on a page. Rather than getting a pretty much random page, Chrome pops up a partial-screen zoom box showing the part of the page near where your finger touched. With everything showing up huge, it is now easy to touch the precise link you want. Do so, and the box goes away, and your page loads. I am amazed at how much improvement this one change brings. Compared to ICS Browser, bookmarks can be brought up quicker, and the tab interface is nicer.

All is not perfect in the land of Chrome, however. It contains several regressions from the Ice Cream Sandwich browser.

I have two complaints about bookmarks. One is that previous versions of the browser would show thumbnails of sites in the bookmark viewer. This was a nice navigation aid. Chrome shows only favorites icons, if one is available, or a generic icon if not. Also, the bookmarks synced with other Android devices are called, confusingly enough, “Desktop Bookmarks” now, and require an extra tap to access.

I have had occasional trouble with Chrome not wanting to prompt for credentials for servers on my LAN that use HTTP auth.

Chrome has also removed the ICS browser’s ability to save a page, including all its elements, for offline viewing. Good for things like an airline checkin screen and such. I have no idea why Chrome removed this. I installed the Firefox Beta for Android, which also doesn’t have the offline save feature, but it does have a save to PDF feature.

Soft Keyboard

The on-screen soft keyboard in Jelly Bean is a significant regression from previous versions of Android. My biggest complaint is the lack of visual feedback for keypresses. On earlier versions of Android, when you push a key, you’ll see an image of it pop up on the screen, offset a little from the location of the key itself. In JB, all that happens is that the key itself changes colors. Not very helpful, because it is under your finger at the time. This small thing frustrates me to no end.

The keyboard in ICS introduced some nice features as well, mainly long-presses as shortcuts to other features. For instance, you can long-press a key on the top row of letters to get numerals without having to switch to the number mode. Similarly, long press the period and you get other common punctuation. The JB keyboard removed both of those features.

Thankfully, in the Market, there is an app called Ice Cream Sandwich Keyboard. It appears geared towards people running earlier versions of Android. Sadly, it is also a step up over what we have in JB.

Google Now and Voice Recognition

The other main headline feature in Jelly Bean is Google Now. The somewhat-competitor to Apple’s Siri, Google Now takes a bit of a different approach than Apple. It is said that Siri is better than Google Now at responding to queries, but Google Now is better at predicting what you want to know before you ever ask. I haven’t ever used Siri, but I would buy that explanation.

Google Now is available with a swipe up from the bottom of the screen, or with a single touch from any Home screen. Bring it up and it shows you current information about what it thinks you need to know. Examples include weather and forecast information, time to get to home or work from your current location, alerts that you need to leave soon to get to a certain place on time, flight schedules, sports scores, etc.

Google Now has been mostly a gimmick to me, but that may be because I fall outside its target demographic in significant ways. I live nowhere near a public transportation system, work at home for the most part, haven’t flown wince I’ve had the Nexus 7, don’t follow sports, and already know how long it takes to get places (and when it varies, it’s because of muddy roads or harvest — neither things that traffic services know about.)

The weather widget always seems to show the temperature from a couple of hours ago. It does show the weather in your current location. Well, mostly. I was in Newton, KS one day. I tapped on the icon for more detail. That simply took me to a Google search for “weather Newton”. Which showed me the weather for Newton, Massachusetts — 1600 miles away. Fail.

Speech recognition in JB is definitely improved. It is somewhat useful with Google Now. I like being able to simply say “set alarm for 30 minutes.” And it does it a lot quicker than I could in the interface. It’s supposed to be able to let me bring up my contacts in the same way, but it is much more likely to try turning such an attempt into a Google search than an actual display of a contact. It’s picky on the precise language used for setting an alarm too; say it slightly differently, and it’s another Google search.

JB also supports limited offline speech recognition. I say limited because it’s a bit strange. I have, for instance, a Remember the Milk widget on my home screen. It has a microphone icon to use to speak a new reminder. Tap it, and you can’t use it offline. It also has a button that brings up the on-screen keyboard. Do that, then touch the microphone on the keyboard, and you can use offline recognition. I have no idea how to explain this difference, since both are clearly using Google’s engine.

The speech recognition is indeed better, and might make it suitable for use instead of a keyboard for composing short texts and such. But it rarely produces even a sentence that I don’t have to correct in some way, even now.

Conclusion

Despite some of its shortcomings, I am very fond of the Nexus 7. It is an excellent device. And at $200-$250, it is an AMAZING device. I am truly impressed with it, and don’t regret my purchase at all.

It seems the main problem is the CDMA modem. When I am in an area with weak signals in particular, which is most of the time for me, the battery drains at a rapid rate. It could last as little as 6 hours idle.

It seems there are some differences between Jelly Bean for tablets and for phones. On my Galaxy Nexus running Android 4.1.1, the stock browser isn’t Chrome and the keyboard behaves like in Ice Cream Sandwich (keys pop up, long-press shows other features).

I can suggest a reason you might *not* want the pop-up visual feedback however, and possibly the reason it’s been removed.

I read an article a while back about some researchers using a video camera to view a phone screen from quite a distance — or even the reflection in sunglasses — and by using the location of the pop-up feedback they were able to reconstruct a lot of the key-presses. You don’t really want someone doing that, I take it?

Not really, at least on the Nexus 7. I’m looking at it now. The top row of letters (QWERTY) does not turn long presses into numbers, nor show a visual indication that it will. There are a few long press shortcuts (such as the period to a question mark), but none that pop up the ICS-style menu. It seems there may be differences between JB phones and tablets.

“I have had occasional issues with it not registering touches properly. This is always cleared up by touching the power button to put the unit to sleep, then waking it back up.”

^^^ enough reason to keep me away. Every single Android-powered gadget I own suffers from this. And I hate that. However, my 1st gen iPad never skips a beat when responding to touch. Goes to show you that lofty CPU claims made by android vendors fail to translate into a better user experience. Google gets a F for that.

For keyboarding on Android phones, I highly recommend Swype. The current Swype beta is even more featureful and quite impressive. I don’t know how well Swype would scale up on a tablet but believe the beta works fine on the Nexus 7.